ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – Under fire for his decision to start taking some police reports over the phone instead of sending an officer, St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom says he wishes he had more officers but he has to work with what he’s got.

Chief Isom has 1,200 officers to cover the city, but says if money were no object, he’d like to have 2,000.

“We would certainly have officers, more officers in the neighborhood on patrol, more officers investigating crimes” Isom said. “I think there’s a lot we could do. We would be able to deploy officers in a lot of different places.”

Isom says from now on, if somebody wakes up and discovers their car was stolen but it hasn’t just happened and there’s no suspect description, they’ll take that report over the phone. Dispatchers will then relay the information to officers on the street so they have more time to make arrests and aren’t at the station writing reports.